The Mode of Our Lord's Conception

St. Gregory (Moral. xviii) says: “As soonas the angel announced it, as soon as the Spirit came down, the Word was in the womb … was made flesh.” The body assumedby the Word must be a body perfectly formed. Nor was it formedpreviously to the Annunciation and held in readiness to be assumed.It was formed and assumed in the same instant, the instant in which Mary assented to the divine Will, saying, “Be it done to meaccording to thy word.” In that instant, “the Word wasmade flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14).

At the very instant that Christ was conceived, therational and spiritual human soul animated his body.{-Recall St. Thomas’s theory that the ordinaryprocess of conception puts the conceived matter through twopre-human stages, vegetal and sentient. This, he here asserts, wasnot the case in the conception of our Lord.-}

Our Lord’s body was not first conceived andafterwards assumed by the Word of God. It began to exist at theprecise moment in which it was assumed.

Our Lord’s conception, in its active producingprinciple, was entirely miraculous and supernatural.